Ask Paul: October 9 (Premium)

After a much-needed and too short mini-break, I’m back to wish you another Happy Friday and try to answer some questions.
Cloud gaming
Just wondering so I am in on both Stadia and Gforce now and I know while both are not greatest platforms for me I have all the games I want. Fortnight, Pubg, tomb raider, destiny, nba etc. My question is before you went on vacation you said you wonder how long stadia will be around. With the release of new Chromecast with no stadia support and the fact they are not trying to hype up stadia on the platform they own YouTube. Not ever paying gaming youtubers to stream stadia games on YouTube ... Do you really think google would just pull the plug?

The problem for Stadia is that Google has a terrible history of suddenly killing off services, and that’s the worry here. I will say that I don’t expect all of the current game streaming services to succeed and that it’s only a matter of time before it consolidates down to a few major players. And some of the biggest companies in video games, like Sony and Nintendo, haven’t even weighed in on cloud gaming yet. They could both be formidable entries.

But Google? There’s one major pro and one major con.

The pro is that Google is one of only a handful of companies---the other two big ones being Microsoft and Amazon---that could even make a successful game streaming service at scale because of its infrastructure and the required computer science expertise. (And I always felt that Google might have made more sense as a back-end service for other companies’ game streaming services; I suppose that could still happen.)

The (potential) con is Stadia’s business model. Where the other game streaming services are purely subscription-based, Stadia is largely about purchasing individual games (where you do get access to some “free” games when you subscribe to Stadia Pro). So it’s a bit more like the Apple movie store and less like Netflix. I’m not sure that’s a good model, especially for the worry you mention (Google having to refund users if it closes the service). But I suppose it opens up the possibility of it having more AAA titles, since those games tend not to be included in subscription services so far. And since Google doesn’t have an existing traditional game platform, I’m sure that’s why they went in this direction.

The issue, of course, is that you “lose” those games when you leave. (Obviously, they’re still attached to your account.) That’s true of a console, sure, but streaming services are, by nature, typically not sticky: You can move from one to the other and back again at any time. By tying purchases to the service, Stadia is stickier than other game streaming services. And so you want to be sure about it before diving in.

And I’m still not sure. I was thinking about testing Stadia now that it’s been almost a year, and the service has grown and improved. But that latter bit makes that difficult. With X...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC